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Now seems to be the time to look backward in hip-hop. Following a crowd-pleasing "Bad Boy Family Reunion" at Brooklyn's Barclays Center, Puff Daddy intends to take Faith Evans, Lil' Kim, and Mase for an upcoming national tour. Fueled by the success of Fat Joe and Remy Ma's surprise hit "All the Way Up," a Terror Squad reunion became one of the top-billed acts at Hot 97's Summer Jam this month. The Diplomats and The Lox got theirs last year. As legacy rock and pop acts already know, these shows make money.

Formerly housed on Roc-A-Fella, Beanie Sigel's Philadelphia-centric State Property stands to benefit from this summer of rap nostalgia. However, during the past five years, they've dubbed multiple concerts a reunion. In Atlantic City in 2011, all seven members—Freeway, Peedi Peedi, Young Chris, Neef Buck, Omillio Sparks, Oschino, and Sigel—performed. More reunion iterations emerged after Sigel's release from prison, including a 2015 show in New Orleans with a stripped-down roster. The State Property bill rolling into Raleigh will likely feature a similarly truncated lineup—Sigel, Freeway, perhaps Chris and Neef of Young Gunz.

Sigel remains criminally unsung among the lyricists of his time. His former label boss, Jay Z, now schedules the spitting of bars for Pusha T between Tidal board meetings, but it was Beans who actually graced the Virginia coke boy's 2015 album. Sigel hasn't dropped an album with or without State Property in nearly four years, but the promise lingers.

Freeway, on the other hand, has kept up an aggressive independent rap hustle in the post-Roc years. His numerous mixtapes and a pair of Babygrande Records albums haven't had the impact of Philadelphia Freeway or his "Roc the Mic" verse, yet they've allowed him to showcase that inimitable flow of above-average streetwise lyricism. Onstage, he'll mix the desirable old with a healthy amount of new, which is more than can be said for Sigel, ostensibly headlining for an audience that is fine with that. —Gary Suarez